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Joe Strummer’s Car Is For Sale

The 1963 Thunderbird is at auction now

In a jam about what to get your punk-loving uncle for his birthday? Well it couldn’t possibly get any cooler than this, if you can afford the astronomical sum this auction should fetch. That’s right, the Beverly Hills Car Club is auctioning off a pristine, vintage, Chalfont Blue Ford Thunderbird previously owned by the late Joe Strummer, leader of the legnedary British punk band, The Clash. The auction started last Monday and will end on August 21, what would have been Strummer’s 62nd birthday. If this all sounds vaguely icky, well hey, let’s just hope a true fan will land this unbelieveably gorgeous vehilce and keep it clean. The backstory is goosebump-raising. According to the auction’s press release:

Originally purchased by Strummer in 1987 for $4,200, the vehicle has remained in pristine condition, having spent several years in a climate controlled garage. In 1987 and 1988 Joe Strummer was living in Los Angeles, in a beautiful wood-framed house with a swimming-pool on Ridgemount Drive off Laurel Canyon where he recorded his first solo album, Earthquake Weather, at Baby O studio on Sunset Boulevard. During this time, Joe’s principal mode of transport was this racy Chalfont Blue 1963 Ford Thunderbird. He would take his partner Gaby and their two young daughters on family outings to the desert in the T-Bird. In May 1988 he and Gaby drove the 850 miles in the Ford Thunderbird to New Mexico for the Santa Fe film festival where Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch’s masterly independent film in which Joe starred, was being screened.

“This is such a special car to me,” says Alex Manos, owner of the Beverly Hills Car Club. “I knew Joe Strummer as a boy growing up in London. He was one of a kind, just like this car. Joe had an enormous love for American cars and I feel it’s serendipitous that this beautiful 1963 Ford Thunderbird is coming to us for sale.”

Instead of ruminating punk-wise on what capitalist conundrums might be debated here, or further digging up what economic trevails somebody in Strummer’s mileau is facing, we’ll just end this with another wholehearted defense of the much-maligned Cut The Crap.